Some important birthdays this week. Our Sunday School
Superintendent, Jane Bonavita has a big one today (Lordy, Lordy,
Jane is...). Our Director of Music, Debbie Hunter has an even
bigger one Thursday (Isn't it nifty, Deb's turning ...). Am I in
trouble? Here is one that is safe: on Tuesday, it is Abraham
Lincoln's. Had he lived, Mr. Lincoln would be 193 (and, no, I
don't have a jingle for that one).
Lincoln has always fascinated me. In my view, he was our
greatest President. Others feel the same. In fact, he is now
seen as so important a figure that one contemporary historian
notes that there are currently more books in the English language
about Lincoln than about anyone else except Jesus and
Shakespeare.(1)
It seems particularly appropriate in the midst of the
current conflict to think of Abraham Lincoln. After all, his
presidency was entirely consumed with war. On his first day in
office he was greeted with a dispatch from Fort Sumter letting
him know that the Union troops would have difficulty holding out
for much longer unless they were resupplied. His last day in
office came as a result of what might be called the "final shot"
of the Civil War - the one fired by John Wilkes Booth.
The lines between Lincoln and his Confederate counterpart,
Jefferson Davis, were as clearly drawn as the line in the desert
between George Bush and Osama bin Laden. Lincoln wrote words
which sound as if they could have been written for President
Bush's speech to the nation after September 11th: "Between him
and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an
issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory."(2)
Then, as well as now, the powers that be could see no middle
ground. Too bad. The war that resulted was the most violent
event in American History. The 620,000 soldiers killed almost
equals the number of American fighters killed in ALL our
country's other wars combined.(3)
In a way, it is surprising to look back on Lincoln as a
great wartime leader because story after story has come down to
us concerning his compassionate nature (pardons for deserters,
help for needy southern families, mercy for the Confederacy at
Appomattox). At the beginning of the war he was convinced that
firmness should be tempered with restraint (just as we took pains
to spare the civilians in Afghanistan and brought in millions of
dollars in relief supplies). Lincoln promised that while
suppressing the rebels, Union troops would avoid "any
devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property,
or any disturbance of peaceful citizens."(4)
As time went on, of course, events dictated a change in that
limited strategy. Lincoln himself wrote to General Sheridan and
congratulated him on the scorched earth of the Shenandoah Valley.
The President did the same in a letter to General Sherman after
his devastation of South Carolina and Georgia. War (then and
now) is never as clean as might be hoped. Innocent people
suffer!
Lincoln suffered too. He had his own private war with
depression which he battled with a widely-recognized sense of
humor. There was a story that circulated around Washington
during those years concerning him and Jefferson Davis. Two pious
Quaker ladies were discussing the relative merits and prospects
of the two leaders. One said, "I think Davis will succeed
because he is a praying man."
The other replied, "But so is Lincoln."
The first responded, "Yes, but when Abraham prays, the Lord
will think he's joking."(5)
Once at a Cabinet meeting, the president read aloud from a
humorous book. The Cabinet members were amazed; not one of them
even smiled. "Gentlemen," Lincoln asked with a sigh, "why don't
you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and
night, if I did not laugh, I should die."
Abraham Lincoln knew the depths of despair. During one
particularly trying time he wrote a friend and said, "I am now
the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally
distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one
cheerful face on the earth."(6)
Of course, the President was the recipient of all sorts of
advice to help him with his momentous decisions (just as Mr. Bush
is today). Many of the arguments were based on religion and the
unshakeable certainty that God wanted whatever problem was being
discussed handled THIS way (which ever way the speaker was
heading). Lincoln said, "In great contests each party claims to
act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one
must be WRONG. God cannot be for, and against, the same thing at
the same time." He also wrote, "I hope it will not be irreverent
for me to say, that if it is probable that God would reveal his
will to OTHERS on a point so connected with MY duty, it might be
supposed that he would reveal it directly to me...if I can learn
what it is, I will do it."(7) Good for you, Abe.
Lincoln's religious training began early. As a young lad he
would go to church, hear a sermon, come home, take the younger
children out, get on a stump or a log, and almost repeat the
morning's message word for word. His family said that, not only
would he recall the sermon, but he would also mimic accurately
the preacher's eccentricities of style and voice.(8) Lincoln had
his own ideas about what preaching ought to be. Later in life he
reportedly said, "I do not like to hear cut and dried sermons.
When I hear a man preach I like to see him act as if he were
fighting bees!"(9) Glory!
Soon after settling in the White House, the Lincoln family
rented a pew in Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
where Mrs. Lincoln became a member. The whole family regularly
attended on Sunday mornings. The President also came to the mid-week prayer service, but to avoid office-seekers and contractors
who would pester him anytime he appeared in public, Lincoln did
not sit with the congregation; instead he used a side entrance
and sat in the minister's darkened study with the door slightly
ajar so he could hear what was going on. The President said that
he always found that listening to people talking TO God was a
greater source of strength than listening to people talking ABOUT
God.(10)
Concerning his own profession of faith Lincoln said, "I
cannot without mental reservations assent to long and complicated
creeds and catechisms. If a church would ask simply for assent
to the Savior's statement of the substance of the law: `Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself' - that
church would I gladly unite with." Many today would echo that
sentiment.
He went on, "Probably it is to be my lot to go on in a
twilight, feeling...with him of old time, who, in his need, as I
in mine, exclaimed, "Help Thou mine unbelief."(11) Honest Abe was
a man of honest faith...and honest doubt.
Those words, "I believe; help my unbelief," came from
another man whose life reflected a mixture of honest faith and
doubt. Jesus, Peter, James and John had come back from a
mountaintop experience. It had been a beautiful moment, but now
they were back in the world where people fight with each other,
the world where little children get sick for no reason, the world
where folks get frustrated with their problems, the world where
the faith of the mountaintop gives way to the despair and doubt
of the valley. The mountaintop experiences are wonderful when
they come, but the world where most of us live (and where Abraham
Lincoln lived) is the one that hears a loving Dad at the end of
his rope say, "Lord, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
and we whisper AMEN.
Lincoln once said, "I have often wished that I was a more
devout man than I am. Nevertheless, amid the greatest
difficulties of my administration, when I could not see any other
resort, I would place my whole reliance in God, knowing that all
would go well, and that He would decide for the right."(12)
Abraham Lincoln had his honest doubts (as anyone with any sense
would - there is no shame in that), but he was a man of more
faith than perhaps even he knew.
One of the best preachers of Lincoln's day, Phillips Brooks,
in a memorial sermon after the assassination said, "He fed us
faithfully and truly. He fed us with counsel when we were in
doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes faltered, with caution
when we would be rash...He fed hungry souls all over the country
with sympathy and consolation...He fed us with solemn, solid
truths...Best of all, he fed us with a reverent and genuine
religion. He spread before us the love and fear of God just in
that shape in which we need them most, and out of his faithful
service of a higher Master, who of us has not taken and eaten and
grown strong? At the last, behold Lincoln standing with hand
reached out to feed the South with mercy and the North with
charity, and the whole land with peace, when the Lord who had
sent him called him and his work was done!"(13)
"...when the Lord who had sent him called him and his work
was done!" There is an affirmation of providence in that
sentence that sends us back to our scripture lesson again. If
you recall, it was in two parts. There was the story of the
healing of the epileptic boy and that wonderful affirmation of
very human faith from the lad's father. We are drawn to that
picture because it so reflects our own experience, our own honest
doubt and our desire to do better. But the part of the lesson
that has not been mentioned yet is this strange mountaintop
scene, the Transfiguration of the Lord. Jesus and three of his
closest friends had climbed up to pray and rest. But while they
were there, Jesus was "transfigured" - as far as Peter, James and
John could see, he "glowed," something they had never encountered
before. But if that were not enough, two of the greatest heroes
of ancient religious history, Moses and Elijah, the great law-giver and the great prophet, appeared as well...paying their
respects to one who was even greater than they. Finally, a voice
came from the cloud that surrounded them up there, the voice of
God: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" It affirmed
for those disciples (if they had any lingering doubts) that this
Jesus whom they had come to love and trust was more than a man -
he was divine. A mountaintop experience if there ever was one!
True, there would be a time to come back from the mountain.
Life is lived in the valley. But for Peter, James and John, life
in the valley would never be the same again. For despite the
fights and the fears and the failures, all the things that would
contribute to a lack of faith, these three had seen God's future,
the future that an early Christian hymn would describe as a time
when every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord...a time of no more sorrow, no more sickness, no
more tears, no more pain, no more war...a time when every valley
would be exalted and every mountain made a plain. Peter, James
and John had seen who was in charge, and with the lyric of the
spiritual that slaves of Lincoln's day would sing, know, "He's
got the whole world in His hands."
That day on the mountain, that moment in the close presence
of God, changed those men, just as these moments in worship, the
moments when we feel God especially near, can change you and me.
Yes, with the father of the Gospel story we cry out, "Lord, I
believe; help my unbelief." But with Peter, James and John we
glimpse the future and, with eyes of faith, see a better day.
"Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!"
Mr. Lincoln saw a better day and just one month before his
death challenged his America and ours: "With malice toward none,
with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us
to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up
the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the
battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and
all nations."(14) Oh yes, Mr. Lincoln. Oh yes, Lord!
Amen!
1. James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and The Second American Revolution, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 68
2. ibid., p. 88
3. ibid., p. 16
4. ibid., p. 75
5. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Boston: Little, Brown &
Co., 1985), p. 358
6. Watson F. Pindell, Milestones to Immortality (Baltimore: Role Models, Inc., 1988), p. 30
7. ibid., p. 94
8. ibid., pp. 8-9
9. ibid., p. 42
10. ibid., pp. 78-79
11. ibid., p. 37
12. ibid., p. 122
13. Phillips Brooks, "Abraham Lincoln," Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching, Volume 6,
(Waco, Texas: Word, 1971), p. 135
14. Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address," Masterpieces of American Eloquence,
(New York: Christian Herald, 1900), p. 239
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